allowed to examine and decide for themselves when the barriers of the
Constitution shall be overleaped, this is practically "a government
without limitation of powers." The States are at once reduced to mere
petty corporations, and the people are entirely at your mercy. I have
but one word more to add. In all the efforts that have been made by
South Carolina to resist the unconstitutional laws which Congress has
extended over them, she has kept steadily in view the preservation of
the Union, by the only means by which she believes it can be long
preserved--a firm, manly, and steady resistance against usurpation. The
measures of the Federal Government have, it is true, prostrated her
interests, and will soon involve the whole South in irretrievable ruin.
But even this evil, great as it is, is not the chief ground of our
complaints. It is the principle involved in the contest--a principle
which, substituting the discretion of Congress for the limitations of
the Constitution, brings the States and the people to the feet of the
Federal Government, and leaves them nothing they can call their own.
Sir, if the measures of the Federal Government were less oppressive, we
should still strive against this usurpation. The South is acting on a
principle she has always held sacred--resistance to unauthorized
taxation. These, sir, are the principles which induced the immortal
Hampden to resist the payment of a tax of twenty shillings. Would twenty
shillings have ruined his fortune? No! but the payment of half of twenty
shillings, on the principle on which it was demanded, would have made
him a slave. Sir, if acting on these high motives--if animated by that
ardent love of liberty which has always been the most prominent trait in
the Southern character, we would be hurried beyond the bounds of a cold
and calculating prudence; who is there, with one noble and generous
sentiment in his bosom, who would not be disposed, in the language of
Burke, to exclaim, "You must pardon something to the spirit of liberty?"

DANIEL WEBSTER,

--OF MASSACHUSETTS. (BORN 1782, DIED 1852.)

IN REPLY TO HAYNE, IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE, JANUARY 26, 1830.

MR. PRESIDENT:

When the mariner has been tossed for many days in thick weather, and on
an unknown sea, he naturally avails himself of the first pause in the
storm, the earliest glance of the sun, to take his latitude, and
ascertain how far the elements have driven him from his true course.